The tree-dimensional city: Three books, one avenue, two (postmodern) buildings and escalators in Santiago, Chile.

Abstract

The Centro Nuevo and Plaza Lyon buildings were completed five years apart and their development and conception synthesize the transition from the modern to the postmodern paradigm in both the architectural and urban aspects, as well as the implications of large operations related to urban infrastructures and experiments related to the mixed-use program. As a whole, their development manifests the transition in less than five years from a modern, already impure model of a slab and residential tower + underground galleries in Centro Nuevo, to Rossi's postmodernism of a city-building constructor, typical of the center, in Plaza Lyon, which hoped to promote the interior densification of the blocks, forming between them a public infrastructure, a single building interrupted by an avenue, whose porous urban ground collects both the geometry resulting from the opening of the New Providence, as well as paths for a pedestrian who walks through a fragment of the city, experiencing different models and commercial spaces.